Minds is a blockchain-based social network. Users can earn money or

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...

for using Minds, and

token Token may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Token, a game piece or counter, used in some games * The Tokens, a vocal music group * Tolkien Black, a recurring character on the animated television series ''South Park,'' formerly known as ...

s can be used to boost their posts or crowdfund other users. Minds has been described as more privacy-focused than mainstream social media networks. Writers in '' The New York Times'', '' Engadget,'' and '' Vice'' have noted the volume of

far-right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...

users and content on the platform. Minds describes itself as focused on free speech, and minimally moderates the content on its platform. Its founders have said that they do not remove extremist content from the site out of a desire to deradicalize those who post it through civil discourse.

History

Minds was co-founded in 2011 by Bill Ottman and John Ottman as an alternative to social networks such as Facebook, which the founders believed abused their users via "spying, data mining, algorithm manipulation, and no revenue sharing". Other cofounders were Mark Harding, Ian Crossland, and Jack Ottman. Minds launched to the public in June 2015. A Facebook page affiliated with the hacktivist group

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

encouraged its followers to support Minds in 2015, and called for developers to contribute to the service's open source codebase. In 2018, over 150,000 Vietnamese users joined Minds after fearing that Facebook would comply with a new law requiring them to remove political dissent and release user data to the Vietnamese government. Beginning in May 2020, over 250,000 Thai users joined Minds after growing concerns about privacy on Twitter, which had been widely used for political activism. This led Minds to add Thai language support to its mobile apps, and upgrade its servers to handle the influx of traffic. In October 2019, United States President Donald Trump invited Minds to a social media summit hosted at the White House. In January 2021, after YouTube and Facebook removed tens of thousands of Trump supporters and alleged white supremacists from their platforms in the wake of the

2021 United States Capitol attack On January 6, 2021, following the defeat of then-U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The mob was seeking to keep Trump in pow ...

earlier that month, Minds was among the alternative apps those users adopted. In June 2020, Minds hosted "MINDS: Festival of Ideas" at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Appearances included Tulsi Gabbard, Daryl Davis, Tim Pool, and Cornel West.

Service

Minds is a website as well as a desktop and mobile app. The platform awards Ethereum ERC20 cryptocurrency tokens to its users based on their engagement with the site, and users spend tokens to promote their content or to crowdfund other users through monthly subscriptions. The tokens can also be bought and redeemed for standard currency. Minds offers a monthly premium subscription that gives users access to exclusive content, the ability to become

verified Verified is a United Nations project to improve access to accurate information. In the project the United Nations seeks to organize a network of millions of online volunteers to curate and fact check information online. Verified has held a socia ...

, and the ability to remove boosted posts from their feed. Posts on Minds appear in reverse chronological order, unlike many mainstream platforms that use more complex and often secret ranking algorithms to determine which posts appear. Minds has been described as an alt-tech platform, alongside other services including Parler, Gab, BitChute, and MeWe.

Privacy and security

Minds has been described as more privacy-focused than its competitors. All messages sent between users are

end-to-end encrypted End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, malicious actors, and eve ...

, meaning even those who work for the company can't read their contents. Minds is also open source, so its codebase can be freely audited for vulnerabilities or other privacy concerns. Users can optionally register anonymously. In 2015 an application security consultant posted to the

Full Disclosure Full disclosure or Full Disclosure may refer to: Computers * Full disclosure (computer security), in computer security the practice of publishing analysis of software vulnerabilities as early as possible * Full disclosure (mailing list), a mail ...

mailing list to say that the Minds client was accepting encryption keys without any identity verification, and that Minds was using its own weak cryptography protocol. Earlier the same week, a security company had released a

full disclosure Full disclosure or Full Disclosure may refer to: Computers * Full disclosure (computer security), in computer security the practice of publishing analysis of software vulnerabilities as early as possible * Full disclosure (mailing list), a mail ...

report claiming they had found that it was possible for them to delete any message, edit any user's profile, and upload arbitrary files to Minds. Mark Harding, Minds' CTO, denied the claims made on the mailing list. A security researcher at Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute agreed that the encryption used by Minds was weak, saying that although it wasn't necessarily exploitable, "I am not optimistic that they got it right". Bill Ottman, Minds' CEO, acknowledged the issues reported in the security company's full disclosure and said that the company had addressed them.

Content

In a 2018 interview with '' TechCrunch,'' founder and CEO Bill Ottman said that Mind's mission was "Internet freedom with privacy, transparency, free speech within the law and user control". Minds' terms of service disallows doxing, inciting violence, posting terroristic content, and harassing other users directly. Minds has been described as less rigorous about removing objectionable content than more mainstream social networks. A 2018 ''Wired'' article noted that

hate speech Hate speech is defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Hate speech is "usually thoug ...

was not disallowed, and reported that "The vast majority of content on Minds is innocuous, but posts do appear there that would constitute hate speech on other platforms". Following a February 2018 appearance by Ottman on the Fox News show '' Tucker Carlson Tonight'', Media Matters for America described Minds as "full of bigotry" and described the site's content as racist,

antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

, and misogynist. Also in 2018, a writer for ''Engadget'' wrote about his concerns with the site's commitment to protecting free speech: "It's not until you survey the most popular channels on the platform that you start wondering what sort of free speech and debate Minds is interested in protecting. The site's stars are largely the intellectual bantamweights of the far-right movement, and the debate seems very one-sided. If you're wondering where people with Pepe the Frog avatars have migrated to, it's here. In fact, the general tenor of Minds is a combination of race hate, gun porn, 'pro-white erotica' and lots and lots of weed". ''Vice'' criticized Minds in 2019 as a "haven" for neo-Nazis and

groups and individuals. In response to the 2019 allegations, the site banned several neo-Nazis and people belonging to other hate groups. Nathaniel Popper wrote for '' The New York Times'' in 2021 that Minds "became an online home to some of the right-wing personalities and neo-Nazis who were booted from mainstream social networks, along with fringe groups, in other countries, that have been targeted by their governments".

Moderation

In 2018, Minds had a small team that was responsible for policing content on the site, and was not using artificial intelligence to try to detect content that violated the site's terms of service. In May 2019, ''Wired'' wrote that Minds' moderation team was "about five" people, and that the company was in the process of forming a " jury system" that would remove content based on votes from its users. In August 2019, Ottman said to NPR that they had recently rolled out the jury system, which allows users who feel moderation of their content has been unfair to appeal to a randomly-selected twelve-person jury made up of other users.

Deradicalization

Ottman has said that he opposes removing hate speech and other objectionable content from Minds because he believes it can draw more attention to it, and that he opposes

deplatforming Deplatforming, also known as no-platforming, has been defined as an "attempt to boycott a group or individual through removing the platforms (such as speaking venues or websites) used to share information or ideas," or "the action or practice o ...

extremists because he believes it only serves to push people towards more "other darker corners of the internet". In a 2019 statement to '' Vice'', Minds executives expressed their belief that "free expression and transparency as the antidote to radicalization, violence, and extremism". Minds has partnered with Daryl Davis on a deradicalization project called "Change Minds". Davis is a Black R&B musician who also engages with members of the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...

to try to convince them to leave and disavow the group. Davis has said he hopes to use Minds to teach people how to engage civilly with one another even when they hold opposing views.

Users

Minds told '' Business Insider'' it had experienced 60million visits in 2015. In 2018, '' Wired'' said that Minds had 1million users in total, 110,000 of whom were active in a given month. In May 2020, Minds reported having more than 2.5million registered users and 300,000 monthly active users. According to '' The Guardian'', Minds is one of a group of alt-tech websites "whose light touch in content moderation is presented as a commitment to free speech", which has led conservatives to create accounts on the platform to use in the event of bans from more restrictive sites. In January 2021, the '' New York Times'' reported that YouTube and Facebook removed tens of thousands of Trump supporters and white supremacists from their platforms, and that Minds was among the alternative apps those users adopted.

Funding

Minds has been funded through venture capital and equity crowdfunding. The company raised $350,000 in 2013. The service later raised $1million via a Regulation CF equity crowdfunding campaign. In October 2018, Minds raised $6million in Series A funding from Medici Ventures, an Overstock.com subsidiary.

Patrick M. Byrne Patrick Michael Byrne (born November 29, 1962) is an American businessman. In 1999, Byrne launched Overstock.com after leading two smaller companies. Byrne led Overstock as chief executive officer for two decades, from 1999 to 2019. In 2002, Byrne ...

, founder and CEO of Overstock.com, joined Minds' board of directors. He was later succeeded by Stanton Huntington, General Counsel at Medici Ventures.

References

External links

* {{Cryptocurrencies, state=collapsed Alt-tech Android (operating system) software American social networking websites Anonymity Anonymous (hacker group) Ethereum tokens Internet privacy Internet properties established in 2011 IOS software Websites with far-right material